I am ever so thankful that the deadline for my Mystery Project has been extended. Over the weekend I ended up trying out and then scrapping two more construction schemes. The worst of which was a re-work of the center-out disaster from last week. The result still looked like one of Madonna's nose cone outfits. I can't show pix for several reasons, not the least of which being that I'm working from a very limited amount of yarn, and the abortive attempts have been ripped out and re-used.

The latest attempt circles back to the original idea - a stockinette piece knitted back and forth in the flat. I've moved back to double strand, as the single strand stockinette after fulling was too flabby for my intended use. I moved the increase points several stitches in from the edges. This is creating a smoother contour, and a shape more true to the design paradigm furnished with the assignment. The flat construction is also much easier to describe in written directions, a good thing as part of my directive is to create a project that's not too intimidating for relative beginners.

I've finished one of the two identical pieces that make up my Mystery Project, and am well along in piece #2 (a duplicate of #1). The third piece is differently shaped, and needs to be knit in an inconvenient direction in order to keep the coefficient of shrinkage uniform among all three. Why three pieces?? In this case I thought that having a seam would be a strengthening and supportive feature, with the extra thickness of the seam allowance acting as a skeletal element.

Of course the scariest part will be the fulling. I've adjusted the proportions of the knit original to mirror the shrinkage ratios of the swatch. It looks rather odd - longer than it's wide but if I'm lucky, it should end up being close to the target measurements. To top it off, I'll probably be fulling this by hand rather than in the washing machine. My machine is not very good for this sort of thing.

As someone who believes in statistics, probability and the value of planning rather than luck, I am not that comfortable right now. Plus I'm fighting off project fatigue. That's the feeling I get when I've learned about all I can from a particular effort or am confronted by a problem I don't think is worth the tedium to solve, and am not looking forward to the slog to completion. Deadlines make it worse. This is the point when I often set work aside, or feel the seduction of a parenthetical project. Several are calling to me siren-like right now. Not the least being a beautiful skein of blue/green hand dyed sock weight merino graciously given to me by uber-talented June Oshiro. That's calling out to become a pair of fingerless mitts. It's a reedy little voice, but an insistent one, and it gets louder every time I sit down to work on the Mystery Project.

Moral of the story:? Knit for fun, not profit.